


10 Things You Never Knew About Severus Snape’s Mother

by Librasmile (Tenthsun)



Series: Sins of the Fathers [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Family History, Gen, Headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 22:52:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2558702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tenthsun/pseuds/Librasmile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Truly the title says it all. Please review.</p>
            </blockquote>





	10 Things You Never Knew About Severus Snape’s Mother

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Once again, these characters – with the exception of Cornelius – are the creations of JK Rowling and her publishers and I make no money from their use in this story.

**1\. His mother’s middle name is Eurydice,** a fact it hurts him to remember because it says more than he wants to admit to about the darkness of her life and her inability to escape it.

 

**2\. English was not his mother’s first language.** Nor was she born in Britain. She spent the first 9 years of her life wandering the mountains, forests and steppes of Eurasia with her father on some mystical, magical quest he could never quite make sense of to her. She prefers to think it was the war with Grindelwald that spurred him to double back to Britain and leave her on their cousin’s door step. The next 2 years were spent in her cousin’s pureblood household, being treated like the poor relation shewas before receiving her letter from Hogwarts. Her poor grasp of English did not help matters in school or out. Nor did her polyglot accent. So silence became her refuge. On the other hand, she suspects that the cocktail of accents she absorbed in her travels – which included, Turkey, Armenia and Russia – surely contributed to the silken sheen of her son’s distinctive voice. And probably earned him just as much ridicule.

 

**3\. The Prince family names are always either Greek or Roman.** Eileen used to wonder if her Irish name – the same name as her poor mother who died birthing her – was the result of her father’s lack of interest. Eileen always did have better instincts than she gave herself credit for.

 

**4\. Eileen was NOT the one who named Severus the Half-Blood Prince** and she had very good reasons for NOT doing so.*

 

**5\. Although Eileen was Severus’ first teacher, she was not the one to teach him about Pureblood ways.** That task fell to their cousin Cornelius, who preferred British-born Severus to “foreigner” Eileen and would have made sure she had as little to do with Severus as possible if he could. Eileen taught Severus to read, to read music and to sing. The songs she taught him were left behind in her mother’s journal. Only after Eileen was gone, did Severus realize those songs were actually spells.

 

**6\. Although potions have been the Prince family’s profession for centuries, Eileen was NOT a potions genius.** She was never more than basically competent. At anything magical. Severus’ first lesson in true, all-magical potions making came from Cornelius who would practically salivate over the boy’s power. At those times, when Eileen would catch that covetous gleam in Cornelius’ eyes, she’d snatch Severus up and take him home, keeping him away from Cornelius for weeks. But she always came back. …it wasn’t as if Tobias could prepare Severus for Hogwarts.

 

**7\. The other reason Eileen always brought Severus back was that she worked for Cornelius.** Muggle economies were always so up and down, that some weeks Tobias was working and some weeks he wasn’t, even accounting for the drink. So, as she’d done before Hogwarts and during the summers, she worked at Cornelius’ book shop, Prynts Books, Ltd., located in Nast Alley, not far from Knockturn Alley and source of manya rare Dark Arts text. She used to bring books home for Severus with Cornelius’ blessing.

 

**8\. Cornelius gave Severus his advance start in the Dark Arts.** In Cornelius’ opinion, only an idiot failed to learn about every weapon at his disposal and only a coward balked at using them. Eileen never quite knew what to tell Severus about this. She wasn’t against the Dark Arts per se. She simply would have preferred Severus NOT learn about them so soon, preferably when he was more mature and less impulsive. But between the badly needed income she earned working for Cornelius and the bruises that were harder and harder to hide, she knew her admittedly weak message was falling on deaf ears.

 

**9\. Eileen never told Severus that she believed in Muggle vampires.** Her son would have laughed at her. She would have laughed at herself before meeting Tobias.

 

**10\. The night Tobias died, the night that Muggle had somehow stopped magic from working inside the house, it was Eileen who stopped him** **.** Severus killed him. But it was Eileen who removed the magical damper that Tobias had put on the house. She’d heard Severus screaming for her, begging for her help. But she had had nothing to spare him. She’d always only ever been merely a competent witch, nothing more, nothing special. So, it’d taken everything she’d had to destroy whatever Tobias had done to the house and in the end she was spent. She didn’t even have anything left to operate her own body. All she could do was sit there, like a statue as she heard her son use Dark Arts to kill her husband, as she heard the aurors and later the Muggle police troop through the house, as she felt Severus grab her cold hand in his equally cold one and beg her to speak to him. If she could have spoken, if she could have broken out of the shell Tobias’ shenanigans had left her in, she would have told Severus, “Well done, well done.”

**Author's Note:**

> Just a one shot idea I had rattling around in my head. Hope you enjoyed it. * To know why Eileen would never have called Severus the Half-Blood Prince you can read my one-shot Answers to Nothing or my novelette For the Price of My Familiar. ) Please review.


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